Relay group swimming 1,375 km down B.C.’s Fraser River to advertise rivershed safety

As a forest disturbance ecologist in Prince George, B.C., Michelle Connolly spends numerous her time on the land, working to defend forest ecosystems from industrial exercise.

But Connolly has quickly traded mountaineering boots for swim fins.

Since early August, she’s been a part of a relay group that’s swimming the 1,375-kilometre size of the Fraser River to deliver consciousness to the significance of defending the Fraser rivershed. By the time the swimmers are completed, they’ll have been within the river each day for nearly a month.

The Fraser Riverkeeper Society, the group behind the swim, calls the Fraser “one of the world’s great salmon-bearing rivers, and one of the last major wild rivers anywhere.”  

For Connolly, swimming within the river every day is giving her a singular perspective on the trouble to guard it, and the lands round it.

“Being in the water changes everything,” she mentioned throughout a stopover in Prince George. “You can see the landscape from the point of view of something that lives on the water. You can really immerse yourself in, really, the lifeblood of B.C., which is the Fraser River.”

Naomi Devine of the Fraser Riverkeeper Society and Isabelle Côté, a marine ecology professor at Simon Fraser University, are the opposite core members of the group. Throughout the journey, swimmers from First Nations situated alongside the river have been filling a fourth spot.

The swimmers are following the identical route Fin Donnelly took when he swam the Fraser in 1995 and 2000. Donnelly — who was the MLA for Coquitlam-Burke Mountain from 2020 to 2024 — is the chief of the Fraser Riverkeeper Society and is alongside on the present journey in a help function.

Fraser River at a ‘crossroads’

According to the society, the present expedition is essentially the most seen initiative in a six-year marketing campaign to guard 30 per cent of the Fraser rivershed by 2030. The society says regardless of the Fraser’s ecological, cultural and financial significance, solely 17.6 per cent of its rivershed is at present protected.

Donnelly says reaching that 30 per cent protected stage is a matter of working with rights and title holders to make it occur.

“There’s 76 nations in the Fraser rivershed, there’s 75 municipalities,” Donnelly mentioned. “So it’s a huge area with many moving parts. And we want to bring people together to look at protection. There are so many people that want to see this river protected for future generations.”

The society says together with the Fraser’s significance to salmon — that are in decline — it helps forests, farms, wetlands, estuaries, communities and cities.

It says the Fraser is at a “crossroads” due to habitat fragmentation brought on by industrial growth, and that the system is already confused by hotter waters, drought, floods and wildfires introduced on by local weather change.

Swimmers masking about 40 km a day

The swimmers first climbed into the Fraser on Aug. 7 at Tête Jaune Cache, close to Mount Robson Provincial Park.

Supported by crew members on two giant rafts and a smaller dinghy, they’ve been taking turns within the water and averaging about 40 kilometres every day. By the time they received to Prince George, they’d coated about 500 kilometres in 11 days.

“It’s gone great — not without some uncomfortable mornings putting on a wet wetsuit on a chilly, foggy morning,” Connolly mentioned. “The Upper Fraser water is really cold. We’ve also had some blazing hot days. We’ve seen tons of wildlife, we’ve gone through rapids. It’s been pretty fabulous.”

At spots within the river too tough to swim, the relayers will climb aboard one of many rafts, or get out of the water altogether.

Their final scheduled day within the water is Sept. 4, once they plan to climb out of the Fraser at Garry Point Park in Richmond.